Some people try to get ahead by trying to hold others back.

It doesn’t always work, but it’s annoying to deal with.

See how the worker in this story made sure his coworker pays a price for his egotistical behavior.

Petty sysadmin gets an hour of questions to reflect on life choices

I moved countries and was on a temporary visa for a while.

I couldn’t get a proper role in my existing profession where I was a fairly experienced sysadmin for a popular package at the time used by many corporates.

But his talent didn’t lead to harmony at work.

So I filled in the time with IT help desk first line support, and in one role, got a reputation amongst my peers for knowing this particular package pretty well, so I would get all those tickets.

This was fine.

I could usually figure the issue out way quicker than most of the guys and if it needed something fixing behind the scenes, I would be able to let the local sysadmin know what the issue was, for a quick fix.

Win-win, right? No.

The local sysadmin, lets call him Jerk, did not like anyone else in his little feifdom.

He would go out of his way to avoid applying any fix I had suggested, usually meaning the poor end user would get back to me days later wondering why the issue was still not fixed.

It was because Jerk had done something unrelated that would never fix the problem, as he would not accept the real fix from me.

So he tried to make to make it work.

I started managing him by not giving the fix, but nudging him in the right direction and hoping he would not take it as a challenge to his authority, but rather something I was too dumb to figure out.

This way, he could victoriously ‘win’ one over on me. I cared not at all, if it got the job done.

The contract came to an end soon enough, my proper visa came through, and I moved on and got a good role elsewhere, forgetting all about Jerk.

One day, my new manager called me in to help interview a candidate for a role on our team.

I walked in, and was delighted to see Jerk waiting for us.

He shook my manager’s hand, then turned to me, and I watched as the recognition hit him and he visibly sagged.

I said nothing, and was in fact very chirpy and friendly, asked extra questions, and was generally fascinated by what he had to say, particularly around team working and people skills.

Then he went straight for his nemesis’s jugular.

He was sadly unsuccessful in his application, largely due to me telling my boss what a jerk he was immediately after the interview concluded.

My favourite part was that all the way through the interview, we both knew he wasn’t getting the job, but I got to make him sit through it anyway. And people say the universe doesn’t care! Delicious.

Here is what folks are saying.

I’m sure this felt amazing!

I love when revenge doesn’t affect others.

I don’t think it would be worth the headaches.

We can only hope!

Very true! Be nice.

Let’s hope he stopped playing these games.

It’s exhausting to keep it up.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.